I'm finding it too coincidental to be true, but just when I'm going through a period of uncertainty about my future, especially career-wise, my QT material Everyday with Jesus is on the theme of seeking God's direction and having faith in His ways.
As my internship inches towards the halfway mark, I thank God for showing me so much about myself.
1. I don't aspire for obscene salaries, just decent payouts relative to what the company believes I can contribute. I'm pretty much satisfied with never earning above $10K a month for the rest of my life. But then again, I become increasingly restless whenever I feel that I am not being pushed to my fullest potential, and get irritated when others are constantly reminding me of the "learning points" of the menial aspects, even if they are right.
2. Despite my dad's mild disappointment that none of his sons are following his footsteps towards being an engineer, he will be comforted to know that at least one of them is strongly inclined towards the nature of his work i.e. consulting. My preferred scope of work is largely advisory, and I need to work towards not jumping so quickly into a defensive mode upon criticism, especially when the critic doesn't have a better solution him/herself.
3. I am not inclined towards using the phone for communication, I prefer face-to-face interactions with clients, and don't mind traveling to do so (I do harbor a dream to travel around the world on mad schedules for working assignments before I get attached or married). I also realize a strong tendency to sound extremely cordial, polite and instructional over emails. The moment I step into office, I tend to morph into a character markedly different from how my friends have perceived me to be, and I don't see it as necessarily a bad thing.
4. I value efficiency and quality above all else, and harbor a pet peeve against people who take twice the time I would take to do double the work. I thrive working in teams with clear, dedicated role for each person. The resultant is a terrible impatience for slow results and long, ineffective meetings that I justify based on the fact that we are paid to have better things to do with our time.
5. My strengths lie in research and analysis. I have a knack for creating hypothesis, theories, models and frameworks for understanding every and any problem, and I work best with a marker and a whiteboard. However, the downside is that of any theorist: a tunneling vision and almost total neglect for other competing attributes that I don't deem as important.
6. Sociology has taught me how to observe the positives and negatives of every situation. Thus, I tend to be pessimistic in a happy environment and optimistic during a crisis. Leadership studies show that if contagious, such traits tend to produce devil's advocates in the former situations, and charismatic leaders in the latter situations.
7. My unconsciously competitive nature around guys makes me a boon for the company and a bane for relationships. I thus thrive in a female-dominated environment running on testosterone compared to a male-dominated environment where everyone views me as a threat, or is led to do so. Embarrassingly, this also means that I work better in an office full of beautiful women than super friendly men.
8. Excellent presentation skills, British/American accents and the ability to suck up to the boss does not impress me, instead, it serves to increases my doubts about whether the boss can see through such a facade him/herself. Clear-mindedness, superb work dissemination and a knack for balancing client and corporate expectations are the truly admirable traits in my opinion.
9. Trust from clients, high-level superiors and subordinates under my charge (in that order) translate into a strong driving factor for me. Clients and superiors who value my opinion and in turn will tell me how I can improve in private make me feel like my effort has paid of. Superiors who give work late or with impossible deadlines (especially if it is a matter of lack of competence on their part) or openly reprimand me in front of my colleagues for a quality of work that they themselves cannot reproduce, will find it hard to motivate me to prioritize their work in the future. (Not that something like that has happened before)
10. Now that I'm single, I grow easily attached to my work, and possess the bad habit of checking and replying emails even when I'm at home or on holiday. I prefer long, non-stop working hours to university lectures and classes with time-wasting 2/4/6hr breaks in-between. My mum was right to worry about me being a workaholic, and is constantly trying to coax me home with home-cooked food.
This ends my reflection after nearly 3 months of internship work.
I wonder if these will change towards the end of 6 months, and if so, how.
So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him? -Solomon (Ecclesiastes 3:22)
No comments:
Post a Comment